It’s much more common for loved ones to keep silent about their emotional needs for fear of appearing unsupportive. Likewise, Caitlyn Jenner’s children have spoken publicly about their struggle to grasp her transition: “Should we still call you Dad?” Jamie Lee Curtis has been candid about the difficulty of letting go of her trans daughter’s dead name. My friend Cam described her own sense of loss about her partner’s transition: “I completely support, but I’m. A 2018 study found that most loved ones of a person in transition experience grief, even as they support the person. In my bid to better understand my feelings, I discovered that I’m not alone. As I did, I wondered: Could I still talk about my child’s past or were the memories attached to that before time of his life gone with the name he now forbade me to speak? Would we still watch “Legally Blonde” together? Would we still play makeover? Would I be excluded from his experience of puberty? From crushes? What else was I losing? It was a heartbreak, a kind of death. How could I say I even knew my own baby, the one I’d carried, cherished, nurtured for 12 years? The one with such emotional intelligence, such grace, who touched the heart of everyone they met? I wasn’t just pining for my children thousands of miles away in this terrible situation. I felt as though all that I had thought was real had become a myth. My purpose, the most important job I had, was to love and protect my children, and this child seemed to be slipping away from me. It is an affront to and an invalidation of their person.ĭead name. To use the dead name of a transgender, gender queer, or nonbinary person is a particular act of aggression. I learned that a dead name is the one given at birth and left behind when a person changes their name to affirm a new identity. It was the first time I’d heard the term. My child wrote a fiery response, whose conclusion was that he would not respond to Charlie, Charles, or his “ dead name.” “I don’t know if I can call you that,” I texted back. Perplexed by the silence - no communication was unusual for my children - I continued to reach out every day until Charlie texted me: “I’m going by Zero now.” I’d always encouraged them to be comfortable in who they are, and here was Charlie telling me who he was.īut as the weeks wore on, he became distant without explanation. I would love and support both of my children no matter what. Charlie’s declaration was easy enough to roll with - his happiness and well-being were and are all that matter to me. I’d said in the past that if he had been born male, I’d have named him Charles Wallace after the genius empathetic hero of the novel “A Wrinkle in Time” and after my grandfather, Wallace Charles. His new pronouns, he informed me, were he/they, and he wanted to be called Charlie or Charles Wallace. The child I had known until that moment as my daughter rounded the doorway and, with an air of uncertainty, threw up jazz hands. We hugged and I asked, “Where is your sister?” At what had been our family home, I saw my older child first. It was during a brief visit in Boston with my two kids that I learned I no longer had a daughter. I was penniless and stuck in Idaho at my mother’s home for a few months while my children went back to Massachusetts to stay with their father. Quarantine strained my custody arrangements. A mission that, at least for us, eventually led to us living our respective dreams.Whenever I said her name, I thought of a character from the Harry Potter universe - strong, brave, unfailingly kind. Though we led completely different, barely parallel lives, Bloom, and countless others with whom we may never cross paths, shared in this quest to express identity via personal style. I was much happier in paisley rompers and super-frilly halter tops, but figuring that out was part of the power of being able to afford, purchase, and replace my entire wardrobe, multiple times over. I would save my babysitting cash and trek to the store with my best friend, filling shopping bags with beaded tops and miniskirts, and eventually khaki shorts and boys’ button-up tops - the type of clothing I thought was required to show the world that you’re a girl interested in other girls. Bloom was in the early stages of her modeling career, choosing “cutting edge” pieces to show off back on the South Side. We didn’t know each other, or even know of each other, but shopping at H&M in the early aughts proved to be momentous for both of us. Leyna Bloom and I used to shop at the same H&M, the massive, multi-level store that opened on Chicago’s State Street in the early 2000s.